Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

Looks like a brownie, tastes like a brownie, feels better than eating a brownie. As with this  farro salad , this recipe was inspired by a trip to the fabulous  Camas Country Mill .  We went for sandwiches, bought bread and a scone for a treat, and then I was lured by a cute little jar of lentil brownie bites, so we got one of those too. It was delicious, and so I came home to do some googling. The result was  this recipe from Vegan Richa , which doesn't taste exactly like the one I had at the mill, but it's nearly as delicious and perfectly easy to make. If I didn't have an Instant Pot, I don't think I would have bothered. I've never been successful cooking lentils on the stove top without it bubbling over and making a mess at some point in the cooking process, and also I wasn't excited about having to dirty two pots and a food processor. But lentils are so easy in the instant pot, and after 2 minutes of cooking, they were easy enough to mash that I d...

Steamy This time of year, my 6 swiss chard plants are yielding a full bunch of chard every few days. I've been making lots of spinach recipes and subbing chard, and serving assorted things with a side of chard, but it's exciting when I find an actual chard recipe that I want to try.  This recipe for  Swiss Chard with Lentils and Feta  came up in my Pinterest feed, and I'm actually pretty sure that I tried it once before, but I decided to try it again because I couldn't remember whether I liked it. (This is why I keep track of recipes on this blog.) Having now made it and enjoyed it, I think that I did in fact make it before but I executed it better this time, elevating it to a status worthy of saving on the blog. One change that I unintentionally made is that after realizing my only onion was rotten, I substituted green onions. The original recipe said to saute the onions and cook them with the lentils, so I did that with about 1/3 of the green onions (th...

Not quite soup... When I noticed that I had pinned the same recipe twice on my Instant Pot Pinterest board, I decided it was time to try it. Also, it's a  Pinch of Yum recipe  that I hadn't tried yet, so it was bound to happen sooner or later. I bought the ingredients and then noticed the adamant note at the bottom of the original recipe to use actual wild rice, not wild rice blend. I didn't know anything about wild rice, but apparently wild rice blends (which is what I had purchased) are mostly brown or white rice with some wild rice mixed in. It was too late to turn back, though, so I thought I'd see what would happen. It turns out the rice breaks down too much, so the end result is a bit more like the consistency of risotto than soup. I'm definitely not complaining. I will try it again in the future with actual wild rice for comparison's sake, but this recipe is a keeper even in this halfway-between-soup-and-risotto form. The original recip...

Is it summer yet? This is a perfect simple, healthy meal. It's easy to prep a bunch of the ingredients and eat these bowls for days, just baking the egg rolls and heating a portion of protein each time. It's also completely customizable depending on what vegetables and proteins you have on hand. We will be trying a CSA this summer, and I'll have to keep this meal in mind when I have lots of veggies to use up. The "Recipe": ("Recipe" is in quotations because I don't have any kind of helpful quantities to offer here) Jasmine rice Lots of sliced vegetables (this time I used cucumbers, carrots, scallions, and lettuce) Protein (I like cubed tofu, tossed in olive oil and salt and baked at 350 for 40 minutes, or shrimp) Nuoc cham (I mix water, lime juice, sugar, fish sauce, and chili paste to taste) OR Peanut sauce (I like  Cookie and Kate's recipe : 1/3 c peanut butter, 2 tb rice vinegar, 2 tb soy sauce, 2 tb honey, 1 tb sesame ...

I strongly recommend topping it with seared scallops. I really love the undertones of wine in risotto, but I'm not a big white wine drinker, so I decided to try this wine-free recipe. With fancy parmesan (from the $5 bin at the Fred Meyer cheese counter) and homemade vegetable broth and the delicious creaminess that the Instant Pot creates, I didn't miss it. This tasted like restaurant food. The scallops didn't hurt. I followed this  official Instant Pot recipe , subbing asparagus for their mushrooms and spinach, and subbing dried basil for thyme, and eliminating the crushed red pepper. Oh, and I'm sure I added more than their recommended amount of parmesan. The more the merrier. The Recipe: 2 tb olive oil for risotto plus 1 tb for asparagus 1 medium shallot, minced 1/4 tsp salt for risotto plus 1/4 tsp for asparagus 2 cloves garlic, minced 2 c vegetable broth 1 c arborio rice 1/4 tsp dried basil 1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces...

The weird meat-looking thing on the lower right is Indian pickle. I like my lentils best when they are broken down into mush, and I like bean/rice combination recipes, and I like when the beans and rice are mixed together so the leftovers can be stored together and maybe even cooked in one pot. And obviously, I love any excuse to try something new in the Instant Pot. And so, when I came across khichdi on Pinterest, I was pretty excited. I'm kind of surprised I've never had it before, because from my reading it sounds like it's a pretty common Indian dish. And there are lots of variations. I chose a variation that made it into a totally uniform porridge-like mush, and I used urad dal and jasmine rice because that's what I had, though I'll definitely try it with basmati rice in the future. Apparently khichdi is commonly served to people with sensitive stomachs - sick people, babies, etc. It was already in my meal plan for the week when I ended up with s...

Next time it'll have roasted broccoli, too. In an effort to minimize dairy because it makes me itchy, I decided it was time to jump on the cashew sauce bandwagon. I know I like these sauces, but I haven't made them before because I've read that they really require a good high-speed blender. My blending appliances are the food processor, magic bullet, and immersion blender, and I'm not sure any of those would cut it. After some googling, I found the expensive secret - buy pre-made cashew butter and use that instead. The substitution is to use half the amount of cashew butter that you would have used raw cashews. This recipe used half of a $13 jar, and it made 5-6 servings, which for now is more reasonable than buying a new blender. The consistency is pretty much like fake nacho cheese except less gross. Specifically, it doesn't congeal or separate into weirdness like fake nacho cheese does. The flavor isn't exactly like cheese, but it's definitely...